“You mean, he killed himself?”
“We’re looking into it, Mike,” Detective Jones said. “That’s why we really need you to answer our questions.”
“Anything you can tell the detectives about Billy might help them figure out exactly what happened,” Riel said.
Billy. Hanged. That decided it.
“I saw him yesterday after school,” I said. “He was in the kitchen when I got home, and he had been drinking. We talked about my mother, about how she died.” This didn’t seem to surprise the two detectives. Riel must have filled them in on my family background. “Billy was upset because I had been talking about it to Mr. Riel. He wanted me to just shut up about it, and I told him I wouldn’t.”
“Was there something in particular he didn’t want you to say, Mike?”
I told them everything. There was no reason not to. Nothing worse could happen to Billy now. Nothing worse could happen to me, either.
The detectives took notes while I talked. When I had finished, they asked me a few questions. Then they asked me to go to the police station to make a statement.
“Can it wait until tomorrow?” Riel said.
They said it could. Just as they were finishing, a woman showed up. She said she was from Children’s Aid.
I remembered what Billy had said to me. You want to end up in foster care, Mikey? Is that what you want? Like I was the one who was going to put me there if I didn’t keep my mouth shut. Only it wasn’t me who had done it. It was Billy. Billy, who was hanged.
“I’m not going with her,” I told Riel.
“You have any other relatives in the city?”
I shook my head. I didn’t have any other relatives, period. Riel stood there for a few moments, his hands in his pockets. Finally he said, “You want to stay at my place tonight, Mike? We can make other plans tomorrow.”
I looked at the woman from Children’s Aid. She was older than my mom had been, and she looked like she was going to collapse under the weight of the huge purse that hung off her shoulder. She frowned when Riel made his suggestion, but she didn’t say no. Instead, she took Riel aside and talked to him. They talked for a long time. The whole time, the woman was scribbling in a folder. When she finished talking to Riel, she called one of the detectives over and talked to him and made more notes. Then she pulled out a cell phone and made a call. Finally she gave Riel her card. Then she walked back up the street to her car.
“You can’t go in the house yet,” Riel said to me. “If there’s anything you need for tonight, you can tell Detective Jones and someone will get it for you when they can. Okay?”
I told the detective, as well as I could remember, where to find my toothbrush and my backpack and some clean clothes. Then I got into Riel’s car and we drove to his house.
“You hungry, Mike?” he asked as he unlocked the front door.
I started to say that I wasn’t, but by now it was way past suppertime and, except for that one patty, I hadn’t eaten all day.
Riel showed me upstairs to a spare room that had a couch, a small TV, and what looked like a million books in it.
“This folds out into a bed,” he said. “You’ll find sheets and blankets and a pillow in the hall closet. Bathroom’s second on the left. You can chill out with some TV if you want while I get dinner ready. If you want to talk—about anything at all—I’m in the kitchen, okay?”
He left the room so quietly that it took me a moment to realize that I was alone. I sank down onto the couch, reached automatically for the remote, and clicked the TV on. Right away I clicked it off again. Billy was dead. Billy, who never listened when you told him to do something, who always had a thousand excuses why he couldn’t fix the screen door or hang his jacket up or spend more money on groceries than on beer. Billy, who used to take me down to the park with him when he was thirteen or fourteen and I was three or four. Who’d push me so high on the swing that I thought I was flying. Who took me into the pool with him down at Monarch Park. Who used to take me to swimming lessons when Mom was busy. He even used to read to me, although I don’t remember seeing him with a book in his hands again after he was out of school. Billy, who stood right beside me at Mom’s funeral, his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it, letting me know that I had to be strong, that I could get through it. He was twenty-one when Mom died. His main interests were girls, drinking, having fun, and working just hard enough to pay for all three, and there he was all of a sudden with an eleven-year-old nephew to look after and, okay, so he never actually turned into a parent, but he didn’t complain, either. He never tried to pawn me off on someone else. When I played in a soccer league, when I still cared about that stuff, he was there, cheering on the sidelines. Billy. My uncle, who was more like a big brother. Billy was dead.
I looked around the room. It was like the rest of the house, clean and bare, like no one lived here, not really. I went downstairs and found Riel in the kitchen, cutting chicken into little pieces.
“You like stir-fry, Mike?”
I told him I’d never tried it. He tossed me a red pepper and a green pepper and asked me to wash them and cut them into small chunks. I was glad to have something to do. The radio was on, tuned to one of those golden oldies stations. I chopped, he cooked, and before I knew it, we were sitting at the kitchen table, eating. I surprised myself by having three helpings.
“You holding up okay?” Riel asked when the last of the stir-fry was gone.
I said I was, but it was a lie. Sure, I had wolfed down supper like there was a famine coming and everyone knew it, but I couldn’t control my stomach anymore than I could control my mind. And my mind was spinning out of control. Suddenly it felt like everything I had just shoveled into my stomach was going to come spewing out again.
“It’s my fault,” I said. There, the thing—one of the things—that had been gnawing at me was out in the open. “If I hadn’t started bugging you about what happened to Mom, Billy wouldn’t have got all nervous. He wouldn’t have told me what he did. You should have seen him, Mr. Riel.”
“John,” Riel said. “My name is John.”
“I don’t know whether he was ashamed or afraid or both, but he was feeling bad, that was for sure.”
Riel got up and started to clear the table. I couldn’t tell whether he was listening to me or not. He messed around at the sink for a while, then he said, “You’re going to have to think about what happens next.”
“What do you mean?”
“There must be someone, Mike. A grandmother, a second cousin, someone who’s family.”
I shook my head. “Mom and Billy, they were it. My dad died a few years back, and besides, I never knew him. If he had any family, I don’t know about it. Anyway, they’d be complete strangers to me.”
Riel cleaned out the sink, then washed his hands and dried them on a towel that was hanging inside one of the cupboard doors.
“I have some papers to mark, Mike,” he said. “But they can wait if you want to talk.”
But I didn’t. Not then, anyway. I told him I was tired, which was true. I had spent the whole day walking. I went upstairs, made up the bed, and turned on the TV. It was maybe ten o’clock when I heard the doorbell. I clicked down the volume on the TV, crept to the door of the spare room, and opened it.
“Jonesy,” Riel was saying.
“Brought the kid’s stuff by,” a voice said. I recognized it. It was Detective Jones. “How’s he doing?”
“Okay,” Riel said. Then, “He’s a good kid.”
Boy, if I had a nickel for every time someone had said that about me lately, I’d have, well, a nickel.
“How about you, Johnny? How are you doing?”
“You think homicide is a hard gig? You should try teaching high school,” Riel said. “You got anything yet?”
“You know I can’t say.”
“Used to be you’d tell me everything,” Riel said. It was so quiet for the next few seconds that I thought maybe Detective Jones had left. Then he spoke. �
�From what the kid said, it sounds like maybe his uncle had reason enough—guilt, remorse, shame, fear of discovery, you name it.”
“What about the note?”
“It was brief, that’s for sure. Three words—Sorry for everything. The handwriting guys are taking a look at it. Then there’s the front door, him leaving it open like that. When a guy kills himself, he usually has a pretty good idea who’s going to find him. You know how they plan these things, John. He would have figured the kid would come home after school and find him, right? But he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want it to be the kid, so instead he leaves the front door wide open and a neighbor’s dog runs in, and then the neighbor comes in. Spares the kid the scene. Anyway, the postmortem’s scheduled for tomorrow morning. Guess we’ll know for sure then.”
They talked for another minute, lame stuff, nothing important. I waited until the door closed, then I went downstairs.
If Riel was surprised to see me, he sure hid it well. He handed me my backpack and a bag of stuff—my toothbrush, some clothes, a picture in a frame. I pulled it out and looked at it. It was the picture that usually sat on my dresser—my mom, me when I was three or four, and Billy at thirteen or fourteen. I looked at it and my eyes got all watery.
Maybe I heard the doorbell again later that night and maybe I just dreamed I did. Maybe I heard a woman’s voice downstairs and maybe I didn’t.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I guess I must have got some sleep, because I don’t remember every single minute of that night I spent in Riel’s spare room. But I know I was awake by about five in the morning, and at six, when I heard noises in the kitchen and smelled coffee, I dressed and headed downstairs.
Riel was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. It was still dark out. This time of year, the sun didn’t really get going until almost seven. But Riel hadn’t bothered to turn on a light. He was sitting in the dark.
“You’re up early,” he said.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“There’s juice in the fridge. Or milk.” He peered through the gloom at me. “Unless you drink coffee.”
“Juice is fine,” I said. Then, when he started to get up, “I’ll get it.”
I poured myself a glass and came back to the table. We sat in silence for a few moments. Then Riel said, “It’s not your fault, Mike.”
“Yeah, but if I hadn’t—”
“I knew you’d tell Billy,” he said. His hands were wrapped tightly around his mug of coffee, like the temperature had dropped to forty below and that mug was his only source of heat. “That’s why I told you, Mike.” He spoke slowly, quietly. “After what you told me, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was some link between Billy and what happened to your mother, only I didn’t know what it was. I figured if I tipped my hand, you’d tell Billy. Then one of two things would happen.”
I felt something big and ugly come alive in my gut.
“Was Billy killing himself one of those things?”
Riel shook his head. “Believe me, Mike, if I’d had any idea—” His knuckles were white against the deep blue of the mug. “I figured that if he thought we were taking another look”—we again, like he’d forgotten he wasn’t a cop anymore—“I figured he’d either run to whoever he was working with, or he’d do nothing because there was nothing to do, because he wasn’t involved.”
I stared at him a moment. This was a person I had trusted—well, sort of. I’d told him what I knew. I’d been straight with him.
“So,” I said, trying to digest the words before spitting them back out at him, “basically, you used me.”
“If I’d had any idea—”
I stood up. I wanted to go home. Now. But what was home anymore except a rickety, empty old house? There wasn’t anyone there anymore. I felt like throwing something, maybe the toaster oven that sat on the counter, throwing it right through the kitchen window, listening to the shatter of glass, listening to the clink-clink as it hit the ground outside. I felt like kicking something, breaking something, shoving my fist through the wall, flying across the table at Riel, punching him, hurting him.
Riel stood up, too, but slowly, looking at me the whole time.
“We have to go downtown later,” he said. “You have to make a statement. You want me to come with you, or you want me to arrange for someone else?”
Someone else? Like my life was full of someone elses.
“That lady from Children’s Aid,” I said to him. “You think she’d do it?”
I was glad for the pinch of surprise on his face: I don’t want you, I want someone else, anyone else, a complete stranger would be a big improvement.
He checked the clock on the wall. “It’s too early now, but I’ll call her as soon as I can. You want something to eat?”
I shook my head. I didn’t want anything from him. I went back upstairs, closed the door, and flipped through TV channels until Riel came upstairs and I heard the shower run. While he was in the bathroom I went back downstairs and made myself a peanut butter sandwich. The newspaper was lying open on the kitchen counter. I scanned the page. Man, 25, found dead in home. The article gave Billy’s name, William James Wyatt. It said that he had been found dead, that the police were still investigating and that they weren’t making any statements at this time. It said Billy worked as a garage mechanic. That’s all it said.
Riel called the woman from Children’s Aid and arranged to have her meet me at police headquarters. Then he called the school and said that I wouldn’t be in today and that he would be late. He drove me downtown. The Children’s Aid woman—she introduced herself as Margaret Phillips—was standing on the sidewalk outside. She smiled at me and asked me to wait a minute while she spoke to Riel. I don’t know what they talked about, and I didn’t care. Riel drove away and Margaret Phillips and I went up the steps and through the doors to the front desk. We were taken upstairs, and I sat down with her and with Detective Jones and I told them the whole story again—when I had last seen Billy, what he had been like then, what we had talked about, what he had told me, where he had gone after that and where I had gone. They let me tell the whole thing in my own words. After that, Detective Jones asked me some questions. And that was that.
“I want to go to school,” I told Ms. Phillips when we left police headquarters.
“But, Mike, don’t you think—”
We discussed it, and finally she said I could go. On the way there, she told me that she was going to find foster parents for me. She said she’d pick me up after school and help me get settled.
Get settled.
Like I could ever feel settled again. And settled where, exactly? I didn’t have any relatives. There had been nobody except Billy. So now what was going to happen? Was I supposed to settle with people I didn’t even know, people who were going to get paid to look after me, foster parents who would just be counting the days until I turned eighteen?
Settled. Right.
It was lunchtime by the time she dropped me off. She told me where she’d be waiting for me after school and gave me four quarters and a card with her phone number on it.
“If it gets to be too much, call me,” she said. “Anytime, Mike. Even if it’s five minutes from now. I’ll come and get you. Okay?”
I told her okay. Then I headed around to the back of the school to look for Vin and Sal. Sure enough, I spotted Vin at the far end of the football field. He was turned half away from me, so he didn’t see me. I had just started across the field when someone called my name. Jen. I turned. She waited for my eyes to meet hers, then she walked toward me until I could count the freckles on her nose and smell that perfume she always wore. I closed my eyes for a moment, waiting to see if she’d slip her arms around me and hug me close, like she used to.
She didn’t. She stopped a couple of feet away from me and stood her ground. Her green eyes glistened with tears.
“I heard about your uncle,” she said. Her voice quivered, and I thought maybe that was a good sign. If she
cared about what had happened to Billy, maybe she cared about what was going to happen to me, too. “Oh, Mike, I’m so sorry. How did he …?” She stopped. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word.
“They’re not sure yet,” I said. I wanted to catch her in my arms, pull her close, and feel the warmth of her skin and the tickle of her breath on my face. But she hung back, just out of reach, and I remembered what a jerk I had been the last time I’d seen her.
“How are you doing?” she said. Her coppery eyebrows were pulled tight over her eyes, accenting her concern. “Where are you staying?”
I shrugged. An as-yet-unresolved question.
“You want to do something later, Jen?” I said. “I could use some company.”
She looked away for a moment. A couple of faint lines creased her smooth forehead.
“Mike, I’d really like to. I can’t even imagine how bad you must feel.”
But. There was a but coming. I could see it and feel it and taste it. She was trying to be nice, though, so she didn’t say it.
“Busy, huh?” I said at last.
She seemed to shrink as she shrugged her narrow shoulders.
“Patrick, huh?”
Her eyes slipped away from mine and stayed fixed on the ground for so long I thought she was never going to look at me again.
“It’s not what you think, Mike,” she said. “It’s—” She broke off. Her eyes met mine. “If you want me to, I’ll spend as much time with you as you want.”
A minute ago, I would have been in heaven to hear her say that. I watched her wipe away a tear. Right then I think she would have done anything for me. She would have done it because it was what I wanted. Me. Not her. She would have done it out of pity. Poor Mike.
“I’m so sorry about Billy,” she said.
“Thanks.” I could have held out my arms. If I had wanted her to, she would have hugged me. “Thanks, Jen,” I said. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Vin watching me. My best friend Vin. “Look,” I said, “I gotta go.” I turned right away, so I wouldn’t catch the expression on her face, wouldn’t have to see if she looked relieved. I walked across the field to Vin, who slapped me on the back and said, “Mom says you can stay with us for a while.”
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